


My Darling

by TeyrianTimelord



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Bucky's point of view, F/M, Flashbacks, i don't speak russian, implied sex, mix of headcanon comiccanon and moviecanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-04-19
Packaged: 2018-01-20 00:48:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1490536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeyrianTimelord/pseuds/TeyrianTimelord
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky remembers life in the Red Room Academy with Natalia Romanova. Natasha Romanoff turns out to be a very different person. </p>
<p>“Dorogoya moya, why-“<br/>“You can’t call me that anymore, James,” she sighed. “I’m not young and breakable like we used to be.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Darling

My Darling

“So if you want to arrest me, go ahead. You know where I’ll be.”

He blinked several times as she rose from her seat and strolled away, as confident, graceful, and deadly as ever. People all around the small restaurant were muttering and murmuring about whether or not the Avenger should be allowed to go free after everything they now knew. His throat constricted when the news cameras lost her to a sleek black car that sped from Washington D.C. as if hell itself had sent a demon to chase her. Pressing his trembling fingers to his temple, he turned away from the television over the bar and stumbled out without paying his drink tab. He managed to keep himself upright until reaching a tight alley, but the weight of hazy memories forced him to the ground. _Dorogoya moya…_

_He scoffed. The girl was barely more than a child, eighteen at the oldest. There was nothing savage or dangerous in those bright green eyes. Only innocence. No, she wasn’t a soldier. Not very tall nor very muscular. She was delicate, pretty, but not a weapon._

_“They tell me I’m training an assassin and then send me a little girl,” he sighed, looking her over for a second time._

_“My name… Natalia Romanova,” she said in broken English and a Russian accent. “I am here to be widow for-“_

_Before she could finish, he swung the back of his metal hand across her face, sending her off her feet and drawing a trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth. She let out a little shriek and folded herself defensively._

_“I don’t need to know your name, little girl. And you’ll speak when I ask you a question. Do you understand?”_

_She did not look up but he could see the tears streaming down her face from between her hands that were cradling her injured jaw._

_“Da, Zima Soldat”_

_“Good. Then let’s begin.”_

He threw his head back and gasped for any air his lungs could salvage. Dorogoya moya. That’s what he called her. She called him James.

_Within seconds, her legs were wrapped around his neck and her quick momentum swung to throw him to the ground. She instantly climbed onto his chest, extending her foot to pin his knife hand to the floor and using both hands to immobilize his artificial arm. She was panting heavily, loose tresses of hair falling out of her braid and over his face. He smirked._

_“Very good, little widow,” he hummed. “I think you’ve earned the title.”_

_She grinned proudly, her grip loosening ever so slightly. She had taken the bait, and he seized the opportunity to grab her by the throat and flip her onto her back, putting him on top._

_“But you aren’t a Black Widow yet,” he growled._

_“Is that so?” she unexpectedly whispered seductively in his ear._

_He felt a sharp pain in his side and looked down to see her holding his knife, just barely breaking the skin of his abdomen through his uniform. It was the first time she had drawn blood or talked out of turn. He could not help but smile at his protégé._

_“Congratulations.”_

“She’s dangerous,” he heard someone outside the alley say. “If the government had any sense at all they would put a bullet in her skull.”

“She’s a hero,” someone else answered. “If they had real sense they would put her in the CIA.”

He shivered as he remembered that both were true.

_Her scream had him barging in at full speed, ripping the door from its hinges and tossing it aside. She was on the floor, crumpled and trembling, taking in unsteady breaths. She craned her neck to look up at him, half her face tinted with purple and yellow, left eye swollen shut, blood streaming from her nose and mouth. He grabbed the commander standing over her by the neck and threw him against the wall._

_“Did you do this?!” he demanded._

_“She failed her test and had to be punished,” the man explained, flailing in an attempt to escape._

_“She is mine, no one else’s!” he shouted furiously. “And if you or anyone else lays a finger on her again, I’ll rip your heart out of your chest and shove it down your throat!”_

_He tossed the man away and dropped to his knees by her side._

_“Can you hear me, Natalia?”_

_“Da, Zima Soldat,” she said weakly._

_“English, Romanova!” he hissed. He needed to make sure her brain was functioning property._

_“Yes, I’m fine.”_

_Cursing to himself, he scooped her up into his arms to carry her back to her bunk._

_“Thank you, Winter Soldier,” he heard her murmur as he carefully lowered her onto the bed._

_He brushed a handful of hair out of her face._

_“You don’t have to call me that was no one is around.”_

_“Then what should I call you?” she asked perplexedly, despite the pain she was obviously suffering._

_“Well, my file says James.”_

An older woman with hair the color of wet snow leaned toward him with a ten dollar bill in her out-stretched hand. He eyed her suspiciously.

“Oh you poor man. My brother was homeless once. Here, buy something to eat, darling.  ”

At the sound of “darling” he batted the money away.

“Leave me alone,” he hissed.

_He watched her through his binoculars as she made danced through the ballroom with their target. She was an absolute masterpiece in that red gown with her face painted to perfection and back poised with the precision of a true Russian ballerina. She whispered in the man’s ear, making him grin wickedly. The two disappeared from the elegant party and he found them again five minutes later through the window of the man’s hotel room. Once inside, she smoothly unzipped her dress down to just her bra and underwear. She seductively ran her hand over his jaw, lulling his head back and eyes closed._

_“Excellent, Nat, now finish him,” he ordered through his earpiece._

_On his mark, she broke the target’s neck as if it was only a blossom on a withered stem._

_“That’s my girl.”_

_It took less than five minutes for them to meet up back up in their own hotel room several floor higher. She was smiling from ear to ear as she tossed her ball gown aside to slip on a pair of shorts and a tank top._

_“Congratulations on your first assignment,” he said, pulling a bottle of vodka off the minibar and pouring two glasses. “You are a magnificent femme fatale.”_

_“That’s why I’m the Black Widow and those other girls are not,” she replied and accepted the drink._

_“You should be proud.”_

_“I am. As should you, James. You are my teacher, after all.”_

_He took a long drink and stepped a bit closer._

_“I’m incredibly proud of you. You have become a work of art, dorogoya moya.”_

_She chuckled in surprise at the term of endearment._

_“I’m your darling now?”_

_She downed her glass in one gulp and quickly reached for the whole bottle. He raised an eyebrow._

_“Do you intend to get drunk?”_

_She smirked._

_“If you continue to call me names in poorly spoken Russian, I do.”_

_He joined her. Two, three, four, five, drinks later they finished the bottle and moved on to the rest of the bar. All the while, she was only “dorogoya moya” and nothing else. Second bottle of wine, first drink, he started lightly caressing her long flaming hair. She giggled and ripped off his shirt. Second bottle of wine, fourth drink, he had her shoved up against the wall, her legs wrapped tightly around his waist, mouths crushed together in a heat of alcohol and passion._

_“I love you, dorogoya moya,” he struggled to say against her lips._

_“Prove it.”_

_He instantly threw her onto the bed._

“Well I never!” the old woman scoffed. “Such rudeness!”

“I’m sorry ma’am. He’s not feeling well.”

They both glanced up to see a woman in tight jeans and a tan leather jacket in the entrance to the alley way, arms crossed tightly over her chest. The old woman gasped.

“You’re the lady from the television who saved New York!”

_He followed the woman for several miles through the streets of Kiev, never letting her out of his sight. She was wrapped in a thick coat with a massive fur hood hiding her face from the biting cold. She moved fast for someone who didn’t know they were being followed. If she didn’t know._

_The director wanted it done quietly and subtly. No guns. No civilian sightings. Getting to her without being noticed by the average pedestrian was proving to be a challenge. He wished the request for his widow had not been denied by the Red Room superiors. She was much better at blending into the human environment, and nothing made him fall asleep faster than nestling his face in her hair._

_At last, his target swerved into an abandoned motel lot, picking the lock to a room and slinking inside like a shadow escaping a fire. He smirked. She was cornered. Pulling his mask further up the bridge of his nose, he kicked in the door and tackled the woman to the ground._

_“James!”_

_“Natalia?”_

_He stared into her deep green eyes. They were darker then the first day he saw them. Darker, deeper, the innocence replaced with fear and sadness._

_“There must be some mistake.”_

_“There is no mistake, lyubov moy,” she said sadly, sitting up to put a hand against his cheek. “We broke the rules, and this is our punishment.”_

_He reached up and firmly entwined his fingers with hers._

_“They can do whatever they want to me. I’m not going to kill you, dorogoya moya.”_

_She shook her head and swallowed what sounded like the beginning of a sob._

_“Maybe not today, but they took your memories from you once. They will take them again.”_

_A single tear welled in the corner of her eye, but she blinked it back. She had the gaze of a prisoner awaiting firing squad who had accepted their fate. There was a time when hurting her was his mission. His job was to break her apart and put her back together in a fashion that suited him. What he did not count on was that like every artist, a piece of his soul had been put into the project upon its completion. He had remade her, and with her the shape of his heart. How could he break her now?_

_“Then run. Run fast and far and don’t stop.”_

_He kissed her for the last time._

She nodded modestly.

“I guess you could say that. Now if you’ll excuse us, I need to get my friend home to bed.”

He stared blankly into her face as she hoisted him up by the shoulders. No, this couldn’t be real. It had to be all a feverish dream. He touched her hair, a different shade of red than before, expecting his hand to fall through thin air and prove to himself that she was just a delusion. But it was just as soft as he remembered. She ignored it and drug him back to the same black car that carried her out of the television.

“Dorogoya moya.”

“Shhhh,” she answered, starting the car. “We can talk later. Right now we need to go.”

That’s when he noticed the necklace. Yes, it was the same one she had been wearing before his memory started to come back. The arrow was small, subtle. Sentimental.

“Who gave you that?”

“Now isn’t the time, James. You’re sick and I need to get you to Steve and Sam in New York.”

He narrowed his eyes at her.

“Pull over.”

“James, I said-“

“Pull over!”

Letting out an aggravated hiss, she pulled into a supermarket parking lot, her hands still gripped tightly on the wheel. Though he body showed little signs of age, she looked so much older than that young women he forged in violence and bloodshed. Her eyes were harder, tightened by years of running and killing, but her face was softened, as if the good she had done was finally beginning to give back the youth he and people like him stole from her.

“We are on a tight schedule so make-“

He grabbed both sides of her face and pulled her into a kiss into which he put every apology and every promise he failed to put into words. Their love had between the Winter Solider and Natalia Romanova, not Bucky Barnes and Natasha Romanoff. It would be unfair to assume that it would carry from one identity to another, but even if she did not still feel it, the passion remained for him. He pulled away when he realized that she was not kissing him back.

“Dorogoya moya, why-“

“You can’t call me that anymore, James,” she sighed. “I’m not young and breakable like we used to be.”

He was about to say something back when her phone started ringing. She put up one finger and answered.

“Hey, Clint…. Yeah, tell Steve I found him…. No, I don’t think I’m up for going out tonight, it’s been a rough day…. I’m fine, really… Okay, I’ll see you in a few hours…. You too.”

He turned his head to look out the window at the bustling capital streets, leaning his forehead against the glass. She drove back onto the road without offering another word. They went on in silence for about an hour before he could bring himself to say,

“You’ll always be dorogoya moya.”


End file.
